What would Arizona’s revered libertarian icon, Barry Goldwater, say about a law that requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person with whom they have made “any lawful contact” and about whom they have “reasonable suspicion” that “the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States?” Wasn’t the system of internal passports one of the most distasteful features of life in the Soviet Union and apartheid-era South Africa?

I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state, which is what the appalling anti-immigrant bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week has turned it into.

Of course, Arizona is far less a police state than is Washington, DC...or New York..., but how do we get to this law being an "appalling anti-immigrant bill"? The bill has absolutely no impact on legal immigrants, or on documented temporary workers.

So, Linda, we're left with the conviction that your problem isn't really documenting the legal status of aliens (since virtually all nations do that), but that somebody in the United States is doing something effective to cut back on illegal immigration.